At my lab – the Language, Attention, Music, and Audition (LAMA) lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga – my amazing team runs studies to understand how children learn about music and language! However, instead of writing about my research, today I want to tell you what I learned from my 6-month-old, Johan, while taking 3 months of music classes. Every Friday this winter, Johan and I bundled up and joined our voices with 8-10 other caregivers to move, learn, and sing at a TipToe Music class.
I initially signed up for the baby classes because of the work I do. I know that many baby-focused programs—not just the musical ones—give caregivers fresh ways to interact with their littles. My job has shown me that all those new and varied social interactions between baby and caregivers build up to big changes in cognitive and language development over that first year. Indeed, I saw Johan begin to recognize familiar songs over the weeks: moving excitedly for play songs and relaxing for lullabies. He was learning and growing!
While I saw firsthand that the research on the importance of enriched environments to promote learning is very much true, cognitive and linguistic development were not my biggest takeaways from the classes. Each week my biggest takeaway was made abundantly clear on Johan’s face when we started to sing: JOY!
He loved the music, he loved looking at the other babies and caregivers, he loved watching the big kids sing and dance, and he especially loved the egg shakers. I felt the joy each week, too! When I was dragging my feet and the car seat at the start of class, I ended class feeling lighter and less stressed after an hour of singing with other parents. What Johan taught (ok, reminded) me over the course of 10 weeks, was the simple joy of making music with others, of working hard (some of those rhythms are tricky!) to achieve something collectively.
Music is a big part of my life: I started singing in choirs and playing piano from grade 2, cello from grade 5, and then there’s my job! When I looked around at classes and programs for me and Johan in the Oakville area, music classes were at the top of my list. I think the key here is to do something that YOU enjoy, and your child will follow suit. It’s just like the advice I give parents visiting my lab when they ask what type of music is best to play to their baby for their development. My answer is always to play music that they – the parents— love (don’t worry about Mozart –unless you love Mozart—as the study on the Mozart Effect has been thoroughly debunked!) because sharing the joy you get from Metallica or Taylor Swift with your kiddo is one of the best ways to enjoy the time you spend with your little one. If your “jam” is visual arts, or lego, or nature then do that with your child, or, better yet, do all of it!
One of the things I liked most about reading the research booklet that came with our curriculum materials and on the Music Together® App was the focus on doing music for music’s sake. That means that the point is not to do music because of all the potential benefits it could have on other aspects of learning and life (even if music can and does impact non-musical abilities, I am a music AND language researcher after all!) but to do music for the joy that comes from the act of making music. And that smile on Johan’s face when we were bouncing to the beat or banging on a drum does exactly that – enjoying the act of making music together!
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For further reading: Short summary of typical Music Development: https://www.utmlamalab.com/_files/ugd/751ae3_4c1f974231a44db0ae5b26103c2280be.pdf
On musical features that elicit emotional responses: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582780/sweet-anticipation/ Music training and its potential impact on reading: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780444633279000084?via%3Dihub Meta-analysis on parenting and language development: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/144/4/e20183556/38502/Parenting-Behavior-and- Child-Language-A- Meta?casa_token=wKZOm6UZHFcAAAAA%3axI1hOvNITZBXeqtudkEYvyUNZ5KmfuEnpxHQ hxzSjSG2YhcL-bFmFCAApKVnAhAB4tVIIAG5EA On the importance of media communication and music science: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4507045/#B15a
